Kevin Herm Connolly launches his new single “Swimming” with a concert in The Cobblestone, Dublin, on Saturday, December the 1st. Doors on the night are from 8.30pm and admission costs €10. Support on the night comes from Barcelona-based Wexford native, Davy Lyons.
County Galway native Kevin Herm Connolly says: “I wrote my first song at the tender age of eight. Thirty-two years later and the muse still hasn’t seen fit to abandon me…
As a teenager, I formed my first band, Bliss, with three of my friends. We sounded a lot like Nirvana and wrote songs about school and mass. Memories from this time include shady promotional deals and a festival slot being sabotaged by a rogue wasp…
I moved to Dublin in the late 90s where I joined my brother’s alt-country band El Diablo, playing bass guitar and piano. We released two albums on Catchy Go Go Records before going our separate ways. I recall being guilted into playing a gig in Whelan’s on the eve of my college finals…
At around this time, I released my debut EP, Rosemary, followed soon after by the album ‘Monsters’. Hot Press magazine featured the latter in their top ten Irish albums of the year, as did Phantom FM. The single ‘Year of the Horse’, a duet featuring Nina Hynes, received an honourable mention in the International Song Competition, whose judges include my idol Tom Waits, Ray Davies and Robert Smith. The video for the single ‘Heads’, directed by fellow Galwegian and former Bliss member Ian Benjamin Kenny, was nominated for an Irish Music Television Award. Good times…
In 2010, I began performing with Clancy, a duo featuring myself and my friend Paul Clancy. We recorded an album called ‘Road to the Heart’ which the Irish Independent described as “an accomplished, meditative collection…moving and beautiful”. Sadly, Paul passed away shortly after its completion. The album was released posthumously. Four more songs that we had been working on – including a gorgeous version of Beyonce’s ‘Halo’ – were released as the Clancy EP in 2011. I have enjoyed performing some of these songs as part of my set to audiences in various parts of the world ever since…
In 2015, I joined up with the Galician singer Su Garrido Pombo for some concerts in Galicia, Spain. It went so well that we subsequently organised an Irish tour and I have since gone back to play in different parts of Spain on numerous occasions. My Hispanophilia also saw me spend a year in Peru between 2016 and 2017 where I gigged regularly around the north of the country as well as in the capital, Lima, and parts of nearby Ecuador. Over the years I have also performed at various times in the USA, Portugal, England and France.
‘Swimming’ is taken from my second album, ‘Make It Up’, due for release in February of next year…